Taxonomy term

italy

The landscape of the central Apennines is a manifestation of the geological processes that have acted on this region for more than 200 million years. It is a place where human history is closely tied to the terrain: a relationship that has produced terrific rewards of agriculture and art, as well as great catastrophes from earthquakes and landslides.

For those traveling internationally by air to Italy to visit Monti Sibillini National Park, flying into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport (FCO) is likely the best option. Florence is another option, but Rome is closer and hosts more flights. There are several routes into the park from different directions; all the entrance points on the western side of the park are a two-and-a-half- to three-hour drive east of Rome. Bus tour services run out of Rome, but the best way to reach the park is via rental car. Rental cars are plentiful, and the good news is that, unlike driving in some parts of Italy such as around Naples or in Sicily (which is not for the faint of heart), driving in the Apennines is much more like driving in the U.S. In this part of Italy, drivers are more courteous and generally adhere to road signage and lane guidelines. All countries have driving norms that are not immediately clear to foreign drivers, however. In Italy, to avoid scorn from your fellow drivers, it’s important to remember to never pass another car on the right. Italians consider it a severe breach of driving etiquette.

From the first century B.C. to the third century A.D., the city of Baiae, located on the west coast of Italy, near Naples, was the preferred summer home of Roman emperors, including Augustus and Nero. The once-grand city now lies under more than 5 meters of water due to coastal subsidence, and is preserved as the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baiae. Researchers have now traced the opulent city’s white marble floors to some of the most famous quarries in Italy, Greece and Turkey.

It’s easy to anecdotally pin environmental changes and their societal impacts on shifting climates. But when scientists and historians came together to look at environmental changes through the warm Medieval Climate Anomaly and cold Little Ice Age in Rieti, Italy, they found that the real story of climate and social change is much more complex — and interesting.

Four-and-a-half years into World War II, the residents of San Sebastiano, Italy — a Neapolitan village on the western slopes of Mount Vesuvius — had already endured much misery: dictatorial rule, invasion, occupation and bombings. In mid-March 1944, they faced yet another catastrophe, this one a natural disaster that would destroy their town.

The Po River runs for 650 kilometers from west to east across northern Italy, tracing the cuff of the country’s famous boot-like shape. But the river has not always followed its present course. Over the past 3,000 years, uplift along a fault gradually moved the river’s course about 20 kilometers north, and new research shows that a magnitude-5.8 earthquake in 1570 catastrophically rerouted the Po River another 40 kilometers north to its present location.

In the 1980s, Tiziana Vanorio was a teenager living in the Italian port city of Pozzuoli west of Naples when the Campi Flegrei volcanic complex that underlies the town and its harbor began to stir. Between 1982 and 1984, the caldera swelled more than 2 meters — the most rapid volcanic uplift ever measured anywhere. The rising seafloor shallowed Pozzuoli’s harbor so that ships could no longer enter. The uplift was followed by a magnitude-4 earthquake and thousands of microquakes that prompted the evacuation of 40,000 residents. Thereafter, the seismicity waned and the residents returned home, but geologists were left with a puzzle: How did the caldera withstand such extreme strain and deformation for so long without rupturing?

In 45 seconds, everything changed. What had been a towering mountainside collapsed into a pile of rubble; what had been a deep reservoir of placid water became a lethal flood; what had been a valley of small Italian villages was leveled to a barren outwash plain.

The author makes a pilgrimage to the medieval Apennine mountain town of Gubbio, Italy, where studies of the limestone layers just outside the town’s encircling walls produced one of the greatest geological discoveries of the 20th century.